t, her
impatience would not admit of delay, and she soon got to glancing her
eyes over a page by way of coming at the truth in the briefest manner
possible. By adopting this expedient, one to which all who are eager to
arrive at results without encumbering themselves with details are so apt
to resort, Judith made a rapid progress in these melancholy revelations
of her mother's failing and punishment. She saw that the period of her
own birth was distinctly referred to, and even learned that the homely
name she bore was given her by the father, of whose person she retained
so faint an impression as to resemble a dream. This name was not
obliterated from the text of the letters, but stood as if nothing was to
be gained by erasing it. Hetty's birth was mentioned once, and in that
instance the name was the mother's, but ere this period was reached came
the signs of coldness, shadowing forth the desertion that was so soon to
follow. It was in this stage of the correspondence that her mother had
recourse to the plan of copying her own epistles. They were but few, but
were eloquent with the feelings of blighted affection, and contrition.
Judith sobbed over them, until again and again she felt compelled to
lay them aside from sheer physical inability to see; her eyes being
literally obscured with tears. Still she returned to the task, with
increasing interest, and finally succeeded in reaching the end of the
latest communication that had probably ever passed between her parents.

All this occupied fully an hour, for near a hundred letters were glanced
at, and some twenty had been closely read. The truth now shone clear
upon the acute mind of Judith, so far as her own birth and that of Hetty
were concerned. She sickened at the conviction, and for the moment
the rest of the world seemed to be cut off from her, and she had now
additional reasons for wishing to pass the remainder of her life on the
lake, where she had already seen so many bright and so many sorrowing
days.

There yet remained more letters to examine. Judith found these were a
correspondence between her mother and Thomas Hovey. The originals of
both parties were carefully arranged, letter and answer, side by
side; and they told the early history of the connection between the
ill-assorted pair far more plainly than Judith wished to learn it. Her
mother made the advances towards a marriage, to the surprise, not to
say horror of her daughter, and she actually found a r